Rap-a-Lot crew and James Prince were all there. They were big men (although Prince himself was small) and from the hood, with money. They dressed in immaculate Polo and Hilfiger and wore platinum and diamond watches and had platinum teeth. Prince had always loved boxing—he had wanted to be a promoter like Don King before he’d even gotten into music. He told me that he found out that Arum and people like him were taking as much as 25 percent of a fighter’s purse, and he thought he could fix that. He said in his soft voice that he wanted to “protect young fighters from promoters, who will try and exploit them and use them up.” Prince and his crew formed Andre’s legion of protectors, tough black ex-street men with plenty of money now, ghetto fabulous, but still with the hard eyes, the watchfulness. I don’t think you could ask for a better guardian angel than James Prince.
Andre was a little concerned about weight. He was fighting at middleweight, which is 160, and because he was still filling out as a man, middleweight was getting harder to get to, and he was hungry. That afternoon, I jumped rope in the little conference room with the crappy swirly carpets, the room silent except for my skips and Andre’s grunts as he shadowboxed, his little cries, ut, ut, ut. Don and Virg sat as still and silent as statues, for fifteen minutes. I stretched and then Andre did some rope work and calisthenics. There was an old balloon from some forgotten party and Virg held it up for Andre to hit, and Andre muttered, “You are one of a kind, my friend.”
Back at the hotel, Virgil and I went to get a big tub of ice for Dre’s bath. Virgil started goofing with the three girls who worked at the restaurant, just talking complete and utter nonsense but so serious that they had no choice but to believe him. He’d been married seven times—he was engaged right now—and they were all wide-eyed and trying not to giggle. Virgil was a big fan of something the English call the “windup.” You play someone very seriously with something you know will make them crazy, just to get them to lose composure. I’ve seen him do it to little boys who come into the gym. “Oh, I heard about you, you were the one crying when that Korean kid stole your bike,” and the little boy will be raging, “That wasn’t me!” Virgil used to do that at the juvenile hall with young toughs in front of their friends.
The girls were all sweet Tennessee girls, soft, big, buxom, black, and braided, incredibly polite and almost absurdly demure.
The next day was the weigh-in, the real one private and underneath the stadium, while a public one would be held later back at the Pepsi Pavilion. Back again through the twisting concrete tunnels underneath the stadium, and it felt just like the UFC, just like Pride had felt, the same kind of concrete and hallways. Andre made 160 and his opponent, Ben Aragon, came in at 159.
Andre had his Endurox shake for right after the weigh-in and some PowerBars and things like that, and immediately his mood began to improve, the gloom that had settled on him lifted, and his natural good humor reasserted itself. The public weigh-in, some hours later, was just for show—everyone could go eat after the official weigh-in. By the time the public weigh-in happened, every fighter had probably put on three or four pounds, just by rehydrating.
That night, back at the airport, we went for our after-dinner stroll underneath that open, pink, burnished Tennessee sky, with the sun slanting and the whole empty landscape swirling around us, and I fell into deep conversation with Andre. The late sunset was becoming early twilight, with the cold deepening gloom of night behind the clouds, and we saw a giant shooting star, a real burner with a smokey trail. Dre and I spoke of the way we both had been blessed, and our responsibilities to that blessing. It is something I feel strongly, a sense of duty to experience life. Dre felt a combination of an opportunity and a mandate from the blessings of his physical and mental gifts. I silently wondered at the hype that was starting to surround him; he was being groomed as the next Roy Jones—it was going to be very hard to live up to the standard he was setting for himself. Was one world title going to be enough? Three? Five? I thought, It is lucky he is so young that he doesn’t quite feel the enormity of the burden that they are placing on him, the way everyone was so convinced of his eventual greatness.
Later we walked with Virgil and spoke a little about God, and Virgil was serious but not preachy, a very deft touch. He made it clear that you have to think for yourself; don’t fall under the persuasion of an eloquent preacher with his own agenda. Find it for yourself by reading John and Proverbs.
We had all done a careful dance around faith, Virgil careful not to ask me directly how I felt, and I careful not to say—because my feelings are complicated, and I don’t express them well. But here Virgil said, almost in passing, “You should learn more about God, Sam,” and Dre paid me the best compliment I’d ever heard: “God could use a man like you.”
Fight day arrived, and the tension started building early in the morning during breakfast. There was talk about the different types of gloves—a puncher’s glove (like Everlast) versus a boxer’s glove—and how a puncher’s glove with less padding can jack up your hands. At this level, every little advantage is exploited, every opening seized, reflective not so much of an actual advantage but rather a viewpoint, a method of thinking. Virgil and T (of Prince’s entourage) sat and talked to Dre and me, and T told a story of an opponent who came on and won a fight, and ended with, “You got to take these bums serious.” He wasn’t lecturing Dre but just speaking a thought that was hanging in the ether—there was no danger of Dre taking his opponent lightly. He said, “I don’t care if I’m fighting a guy who’s 0–12, I’m still going to bed early—nothing changes.”
Then T and Virg got up and I sat with Dre to keep him company while he finished his oatmeal and fruit. He was in a chatty mood and talked for a while about his dad, his white father, who had been superman to Dre—he could do anything. He would take no shit from big men. “Every year some big black dude in the neighborhood would give him some shit about his two black kids, and he would never back down.” He would get mad and protective. Dre felt the same way, ferociously protective of his children.
He spoke about his dad’s sudden death again, and how it had left him searching for answers. “I still am looking for answers, even though I know God has his purpose. He’s still with me—I am him and he is me. We will meet again, I believe that.” Dre looked at me with those sad eyes.
The day wore on interminably, and now I could feel the tension coming off Dre, not nervous about fighting but just wanting to get started. After a light lunch, Dre, Virg, and I walked across the steaming hot parking lot, under the brilliant sun, and talked about politics, oil, and the vast conspiracy that we all can just barely sense under the surface, that conspiracy theory being something I share with the African American community.
Finally, we left the hotel, with bags and gear and nice clothes. On the way out, a cleaning lady called to Dre, “Y’all come back victorious.” Dre smiled and said, “I got no choice.”
Underneath the FedEx Forum there was the same clean, impersonal corporate athletic feel that all these stadiums had. Dre’s dressing room was pretty small, and Virg took one look at it and told me it was too small for me to be in there watching, so I went and found my seat. I understood Virgil’s desire to keep the dressing room pure—I can appreciate the mind-set that refuses my entry, the maintenance of professionalism. Rachel and Dan Goossen had gotten me an excellent seat, out with the other reporters and journalists. I had my big laminated ringside media pass around my neck, warding off security with it like a cross against vampires. And I was just in time to witness the first of several executions.
The undercard held the worst mismatches I had ever seen anywhere. No one else was too amazed; it must be a pretty common occurrence. There was a spate of quick stoppages, and Virgil joined me to watch, as Dre didn’t need to be ready for a while yet. A trainer who knew Virgil, and whose fighter had just KO’d some slob, muttered as he went by, “I wish he’d put up a fight.”
The worst case was that of Anthony Peterson (maybe 14–0), a muscular black kid in against a short, hairy-backed, white balding dude without skills or grace, a guy from Arizona who was supposedly 3–0. It looked like a complete mismatch, and it was. In the first round Anthony moved around him and then caught him with his first punch, a deep swinging hook to the chin and the guy went down and flipped over like a sack of rice. There was a lot of razzing and catcalls, and he took a long time to get up, with the paramedics helping him out, but finally he did stand, smile shakily, and wave. Fans were taunting him, but Virgil called, “You awright, man” as the guy walked in front of us, and I looked at V and saw him purse his lips and shake his head.
Ann Wolfe was fighting a Canad